Home of Lucy Ludwell Paradise in Williamsburg, Virginia, where a now-missing portrait of Thomas Jefferson was among the household inventory on 23 January 1812. (Courtesy of the Colonial Willamsburg Foundation.)

Lucy Ludwell Paradise (November 17511 – 24 April 18142) and her husband John were close
friends of Thomas Jefferson, and of John and Abigail Adams. An inventory of
Lucy's possessions in 1812 listed a large, unidentified portrait of Jefferson. The
research team is investigating the possibility that the inventoried item was
the 1785 Delapierre portrait, that it was acquired by the Paradise family via
the Adams family, and that it made its way to Italy via one of Lucy's two Italian grandsons
after Lucy's death.

The Adamses introduced Jefferson to the Paradise family
during Jefferson's visit to London in the spring of 1786,3 and Jefferson corresponded
frequently with both John and Lucy thereafter.4

John
Paradise died in London on 12 December 1795,5 and Lucy returned to Williamsburg, Virginia,
on 27 August 1805.6

On
23 January 1812—roughly two years before her death and just six days
before she was legally declared insane and committed to an asylum7—a detailed inventory of
Lucy's possessions in her Williamsburg home was made. The list included a large
portrait of Thomas Jefferson, the location of which is now a mystery.8

Jefferson
art scholar Alfred L. Bush noted that "…whether this portrait was part of the
Paradise household in Europe…or was acquired after Lucy's return to the
United States is unknown." 9

The Italian Connection

The
picture listed in the 1812 inventory apparently was inherited by one of Lucy's two Italian
grandsons, Philip Ignatius Barziza, who arrived in
Virginia from Italy to take possession of Lucy's personal property in early
1815.10

In
the context of research on the 1785 Delapierre portrait, this missing Paradise picture has potential significance because of its
Italian association. The Delapierre portrait is known to have been owned by the
Italian art dealer Ugo Bardini in October 1927, who in turn probably inherited it from his father Stefano—himself a renowned Italian
art dealer—upon Stefano's death in 1922.

If
the Delapierre portrait was in fact a gift from Jefferson to the Adamses when Jefferson visited them in
London in the spring of 1786, the Paradise
family almost certainly would have seen it at that time because of their close
relationship with both the Adams family and Jefferson in London. It follows
that the Adamses might have given it to John
and/or Lucy Paradise after the Adamses'
relationship with Jefferson soured in the 1790s—knowing that the
Paradises remained fond of Jefferson.1213

The portrait logically would have
been inherited by Barziza, whereupon it could have
been sold in Italy—eventually finding its way to Ugo or Stefano Bardini.

The research team is working with
experts at Polo Museale and Archivio Bardini in Florence, Italy, to try to establish when and where the Bardinis obtained the Delapierre portrait.

[7] Ibid., p. 446. Lucy Ludwell Paradise was declared insane by a committee of three aldermen at the Eastern
Lunatic Asylum in Williamsburg, Virginia—America's first hospital for
the insane—on 29 January 1812. She died there on 24 April 1814.

[8] Manuscript, Virginia
Historical Society, "An Inventory of the Negroes and Household furniture
belonging to L. L. Paradise at her House in the City of Williamsburg taken by
the Subscribers January 23d 1812." (See image below.)